Make Space for Informal Learning
By Dori Digenti

A new challenge for e-learning is to create collaborative learning spaces in which informal learning can thrive.

When most managers think of e-learning, it is as a digitally supported method for imparting new knowledge, often a course. E-learning courses, whether instructor-led or self-directed, involve the conversion of traditional course content to digital form. The backbone of a typical e-learning offering is usually a course that's based on the following tenets of formal learning, as Stephanie Pace Marshall notes in her "Principles for the New Story of Learning."

• Learning is an incremental process of acquiring information.
• Learning should be credentialed by the amount of time spent acquiring information.
• The purpose of formal learning is to acquire information rapidly, cover content, and reproduce facts.
• Content segmentation is the more efficient and effective way to learn a discipline.
• Only that which can be quantitatively and easily measured is true knowledge.
• Competition and external rewards are the most powerful motivators for learning.

If we look at the chart below, we can see four modes of learning and the methods associated with each pair: formal and informal, and face-to-face and virtual.

	Formal			Informal
Face-to-Face	Courses Seminars Workshops	1		Networking events Team projects	3
Virtual	Tele/videoconferences E-meetings Online courses	2		Web-based collaborative spaces	4

As organizations rapidly move their training focus to virtual environments, a proliferation of methods to support formal learning has appeared: teleconferencing, videoconferencing, e-meetings, and online courses (quadrant 2). The move to virtual delivery often involves combining a body of knowledge with resource links, interactive segments, personalization features, and other bells and whistles. Yet, even in the innovative uses that make the learning experience more engaging and possibly more effective, the underpinnings are still those of formal learning.

On a parallel track, however, there's a growing recognition that valuable learning often takes place through informal learning. Informal learning is based in conversations, social interactions, and team projects, in which learning is part of the interactions between people. It has been acknowledged as one of the key reasons for forming communities of practice, networks, and other forums that allow people to network and socialize. Informal learning isn't limited to a predefined body of knowledge, but rather emerges from the interaction of people. At the heart of it is the transfer of tacit knowledge--knowledge that's not articulated but is acquired by individuals through experience.

Informal learning is based in conversations, social interactions, and team projects, in which learning is part and parcel of the interactions between people.

Peter Senge of the Society of Organizational Learning states that all knowledge is generated in working teams. He sees working and learning as inseparable. Through forming relationships, knowledge is diffused. He alludes to the image of the village square, where people hang out in a social space. That social space is the setting in which social relations are reinforced, trust is developed, and informal learning takes place. In sum, informal learning is that which allows the tacit knowledge resident in a group to emerge and be exchanged, sometimes by serendipity, sometimes in the course of accomplishing a specific project, through the construction of spaces that support learning.

Focusing on quadrant 3 above, we can see that in the brief history of informal, face-to-face learning, a number of structures have evolved to support learning. These include

• Temporary learning systems: groups of people brought together for a short period of time to learn about a specific topic
• Communities of practice: groups of people that share "ways of working" or professional or personal interests and who meet together to exchange knowledge and share resources
• Learning networks: cross-organizational groups focused on knowledge sharing within an industry or focused on a specific business issue.

What is a collaborative learning space?

As Michael Schrage, author of Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Harvard University Press, 1999), reminds us, collaborative learning space is about providing a container for interactions and relationships to develop, as those are the basis of informal learning. The Internet and groupware products must be seen as the medium for relationship creation, not information exchange. The advantages of developing the virtual-informal learning dimension often take a back seat to the touted "loss" of face-to-face interaction. Yet, the advantages are real: Virtual interaction frees us from reactions to physical appearance, allows introverts to be "heard" in the conversation, and is often a level playing field for interaction between managers and workers. Because in a collaborative learning space the conduits for learning are the central goal, there can be a straightforward exploration of multiple perspectives.

Two questions for e-learning managers are presented in quadrant 4 learning structures and methods: How do I do it? How do I measure it? The first question is explored in the following vignette.

Case study: The Collaborative Learning Network

In early 1999, with four committed member companies, the network launched its Website with a public area for anyone interested in collaborative learning and a private members-only area. The members-only area was the initial collaborative learning space and was structured around tools, processes, and knowledge. It hosted a repository of information and a members' directory. What they discovered at that point was that new members coming into the network needed to cement cross-company relations through face-to-face meetings. Also, a Website based on HTML was a significant impediment to building a truly interactive collaborative learning space.

In September 1999, the network hosted its second annual meeting and decided at that time to begin seeking more interactive discussion tools. Based on the connections and enthusiasm of that meeting, a discussion tool was added to the site, and a new dimension of learning began. The discussion was slow to gain momentum, but over time more members waded in to test the waters and join the ongoing discussions.

Parallel to that development, the network launched a monthly virtual meeting using a presentation and teleconference format. That temporary collaborative space became, over several months' time, a virtual-formal mode of learning that complemented the informal discussion space. Through two virtual sessions, the network developed a more sophisticated mind map, this one dealing with the construct of the "collaborative mindset."

In April 2000, the Network had its third face-to-face meeting, now held semiannually. After this meeting, the network built a collaborative learning space using the Lotus QuickPlace collaboration software. The QuickPlace space has allowed the network to combine reference documents, discussion, Web links, announcements, and directory information in an easily navigated one-stop-shopping format. The next step for the network is to determine a workable interface between the static CLN Website and the dynamism of the QuickPlace space. That will be CLN's next evolution in creating a powerful informal learning engine in the collaborative learning space.

The challenge of measuring informal learning

Published: August 2000